


Prepositions

by Isagel



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alien Sex, Bondage, F/F, Leather Kink, Mind Meld, Porn Battle, Power Dynamics, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:04:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Omega has one rule,” Aria says. “Do I need to remind you what it is?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prepositions

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Семантика](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738124) by [Alre_Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alre_Snow/pseuds/Alre_Snow)



Five more shots, recoil up her arm as she dives across the warehouse floor, firing while she's still moving through the air, and then her thermal clip hits empty. It's all right, though; she can hear the creaking whirr of the last mech stalling out mid-motion as she hits the ground rolling, the final hostile down and dealt with. Mission accomplished, even if she had been hoping it would end with less violence.

She rolls to get up, crouched with one knee on the floor, hands pushing her up. Safe and ready to walk away.

She lifts her head. There is a gun in her face.

“I told you, Shepard,” a familiar voice says, “that you could do what you wanted on Omega, as long as you didn't interfere with my business. Would you care to explain to me how killing my number one weapons supplier isn't interfering with my business?”

Shepard lets her gaze track up along the barrel of the pistol, along the straight line of the arm holding it, past the tell-tale fingerless leather glove and the white sleeve of an unmistakable leather jacket, to meet the hard eyes of Aria T'Loak.

“He was doing deals with the Collectors, Aria,” she says. “I needed the information he had. He chose to turn it into a fight.”

Aria presses the muzzle of the gun up beneath her jaw, a harsh angle that forces her chin up, exposing her neck. Any bullet fired like this and she'd probably be beyond any attempts at reconstruction, even if Cerberus still thought her worth the trouble to rebuild.

“Omega has one rule,” Aria says. “Do I need to remind you what it is?”

Shepard could try to take the gun away from her. With most opponents she would be able to, even from this angle, but this is Aria T'Loak, and though she has never seen Aria fight, she's seen enough to believe the stories people tell. She's not sure what the outcome would be if she took the gamble. And if she went for it and came out the winner of such an encounter, this is not the time to send Omega into the sort of all-out war for power that the death of Aria T'Loak would trigger. With the Reapers approaching, the last thing the galaxy needs is more in-fighting. Besides, there is the Asari factor. If she made a move, she'd likely find herself trapped in a biotic hold before she could inflict any harm. And the idea of being held down, immobile, with Aria standing over her...

She shakes her head.

“Look,” she says. “I didn't mean to cause you any trouble. Let this pass and I'll owe you a favor. You know I always honor my debts when it comes time to pay up.”

Aria looks at her. That sharp, impenetrable look, measuring her worth, calculating the level of threat she poses, weighing the benefits to gain from her acquaintance.

“Have a drink with me, Shepard,” she says, and pulls the gun away, turning on her heel and walking away.

Shepard picks herself off the floor and follows, rubbing at the scrape on her jaw from the muzzle of the gun.

* * *

She's expecting Aria to take her to the owner's lounge at Afterlife where they always meet, seated at a safe distance on separate leather couches, with the music and the crowds below and Aria's bodyguards to keep the space between them filled.

Instead, she finds herself in Aria's apartment.

Just the two of them and the wall-to-wall view of the city below, the neon lights and the dirt and the drizzle spread out gray and lurid-bright at their feet, Aria's kingdom of crime and greed and deals sealed in blood. It's almost beautiful from this height, distant and abstract, the ruthlessness of it all reduced to angles and shadows, colors shifting on a still-wet canvas.

“Here,” Aria says beside her, holding a tumbler of liquor out for her to take. “Earth whiskey. I've been holding on to the bottle for the right guest.”

She is beautiful, too, like this. The blue of her skin pulling more towards azure than purple away from the harsh lights of the club, her bearing looser, somehow, but no less regal. She's lost the white jacket, her muscled arms bare in the tight leather top she favors. Shepard's eyes catch, for a brief second, on the way the straps buckle just above her breasts.

“Is that what I am?” she asks, her mouth quirking. “A guest?”

She takes a sip of her whiskey. It's better than any she's tasted in a long time.

“Of course,” Aria says. “I would kill you if I wanted to, but I'm not going to stop you from leaving.”

“That's reassuring.”

Aria smiles, takes a drink from her own glass.

“I'm like you, Shepard,” she says. “I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't make good on my deals. I can always find another arms supplier, and the great Commander Shepard owes me a favor, to be collected at a later date of my choosing. I think we're good for now, don't you?”

“I think perhaps I should have taken my chances at disarming you.”

Aria laughs. It's a low, melodious, gravelly sound, and something pools warm and heavy in the pit of Shepard's stomach.

“Well,” Aria says. “I might have enjoyed taking you down.”

“You mean you would have enjoyed trying,” Shepard says. They're standing too close; she can feel the warmth of Aria's body, the indefinable ocean-salt scent of her Asari skin. She moves away from the window, sipping her drink. Drops herself down on a very expensive-looking sofa.

“Oh, I think we'd both enjoy that,” Aria says. But she stays by the window, looking out at the view. The leather top leaves her back bare, a play of shadows over sleek skin over muscle. Not for the first time, Shepard wonders what she must have been like as a dancer, writhing on that podium that now she looks down on every day.

They're silent for what feels like long minutes.

“So,” Aria says at last. “Have you taken me up on my advice yet? Got yourself a pretty girl to loosen you up?”

Shepard takes another drink before she answers.

“What makes you think it would be a girl?”

Aria turns, leaning back against the window, her arms crossed, her high-ball glass resting in her hand against the crook of her elbow.

“I've seen you at the club, Shepard, I've seen where your eyes stray. Don't tell me tits and ass isn't what you go for. But then the girls there are pretty, but they aren't exactly your type, are they?”

Shepard leans back, rests her ankle on her knee. She feels oddly exposed, without the armor she left behind on the Normandy to go undercover in search of the arms dealer.

“How do you figure?”

“They're too weak, the kind of civilians you want to protect. And that's not your kink, is it? You'd want someone you wouldn't have to hold back with, someone who could give as good as they got. Someone as strong as you. The problem is of course that such people, of any gender, are very few and far between.”

She doesn't know what to say to that. It isn't wrong, but she's always been crap at talking about these things. She wets her lips with her tongue, stays still, stays quiet. Waits for where Aria is going.

Aria comes to her, a slow, deliberate stroll across the floor. Blue skin and black leather and the sway of her hips moving closer. She sets her drink down on the end-table. Leans over Shepard, one hand on the back of the sofa. The other settles on Shepard's cheek, tilting her chin up, her thumb where the muzzle of her gun was an hour before. She is still wearing her fingerless gloves.

“I'm going to do you another favor,” she says. “And then you're going to return it. I'm going to hold you down and fuck your brains out, and when you've pulled yourself back together, you're going to do the same to me. Any objections?”

Shepard's heart is beating wild in the hollow of her throat, her hand squeezing the whiskey glass so hard she's half expecting it to shatter in her grip.

“What happened to the one rule?” she asks, keeping her voice flippant.

Aria smiles, wide. Sheppard wants to pull her down and bite at the stripe of darker blue on her bottom lip.

“That's 'Don't fuck _with_ Aria', honey. You should keep your prepositions straight.”

Shepard rears up then, and kisses her.

* * *

It's rough and unrestrained and her black t-shirt is ripped before they even get to the bed, Aria's shoulder dark with bite marks. Then she's on her back on a soft mattress and her hands are above her head, kept there in a biotic grip she can't break no matter how hard she struggles. And she does struggle – wild, exerting herself, her muscles aching with it, trying to buck up and reach, with lips and teeth and fingers that curl with the need to touch. Aria doesn't let her, though. Aria stays above her, straddling her waist, and Sheppard is naked, but Aria is still in her leathers, buttery soft where her ass rests low on Shepard's stomach, warm friction where her gloved hands squeeze Shepard's breasts, and Shepard curses at her, but it does no good. All she gets is fingertips pinching her nipples, nails that dig in just hard enough to make her pant and arc. She would give anything to undo the buckles on Aria's top, one by one until her tits came tumbling out, but all she can do is lie here, accepting the pleasure Aria lets her have.

“Want more?” Aria asks, smiling, teasing. Her pupils are blown wide, though, the tentacle-like folds of her scalp flushed almost as dark as the markings on her face.

“If I said no, you'd still give it,” Shepard says. “Couldn't help yourself.”

Aria's hand shoots up to curl around her throat, pressing down on her wind-pipe. A warning, but, God, it feels so good, so much strength holding her in place. Their eyes lock, Aria's hand rising and falling with every quickened breath Shepard takes. There's no fear in the moment, just the electric crackle of wills evenly matched, the friction of unyielding forces ground together.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Aria says, and moves. Slips down the length of Shepard's body, hands stroking down her waist, over her hips, shoving her legs apart for her to lie between.

Shepard can feel her pussy dripping with anticipation, with clenching need. Aria's palms stroke up her thighs, settle at the crease where they join her body. Her thumbs trace her labia, skim the edges of her opening. She arcs up, urging, demanding.

“Come on,” she breathes. She's not going to beg, but she can't wait any longer.

Aria makes a soft sound, licks her lips.

“This is where I'd tell you to embrace eternity,” she says, with a sarcastic twist on the stock Asari phrase, “but that's hardly what we're here for, you and I.”

It doesn't feel much different, though. Her mouth on Shepard's clit, her tongue darting out to lick, to lap, hard and greedy, and then the connection opens, the floodgate of the neural interface, and the pleasure is everywhere, rushing into her – the raw, physical bliss of Aria's tongue between her legs, working her open, mixed with that other dimension of Asari mating, the tidal wave of Aria's being flowing through her, setting every nerve in her body alight. Aria's mind, the merciless power of who she is, all that scheming intelligence, all the centuries of her carefully strategized climb to the top, all of it _inside_ her, and she knows she is inside Aria, too, Aria's shared emotions shaking with whatever it is she feels of Shepard within her. It's a feedback loop, her body racked with the touch of Aria's mouth, of – oh, _God_ – of Aria's fingers inside her, fucking her, and Aria racked with that same pleasure, sent back to her through the meld she has created, sending it back again, a Moebius strip of feeling and sensation, tearing through them both, an endlessness of inner doors falling open onto world upon world of lust and desire and claiming. And she's held still, held down, helpless to do anything but feel it, building inside her, pushing her higher and higher until she's screaming with it, until she's coming with a desperate convulsion that rocks the bed. She hears Aria moaning, too, cursing in Asari, feels an echo of her climax shuddering through her, shared and shared again. Embraced and devoured.

Afterwards, she can't stop shaking for the longest time, trembling as Aria's gloved hands stroke her down, as Aria's mind slowly disengages from hers. She's almost forgotten the hold on her arms until it's gone, Aria bent over her, rubbing at her loosened wrists.

She rolls them, then, trapping Aria's hips between her legs and flipping them over, her weight on top, pinning Aria down. It's strange, seeing the queen of Omega looking up at her, laid out beneath her.

Aria arcs up, her breasts dragging against Shepard's. Shepard sits back, runs her fingertips down the row of buckles on Aria's top.

“I guess this is where I'm supposed to make good on my part of this deal, hm?”

Aria takes her hand, lays it on her breast. Even through the leather, Shepard can feel the hardened point of her nipple.

“If you don't,” Aria says, “you really will be breaking the one rule.”

“Prepositions and all?” Shepard asks, her mouth twitching in a smile. “Can't have that.”

She rubs her thumb over Aria's nipple and reaches for the first buckle.


End file.
